


bullets and apples

by subtlewanda



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Punching, Swearing, and also... a kiss, kicking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27883633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtlewanda/pseuds/subtlewanda
Summary: there’s something between you and bucky. you don’t talk about it, not really, but everyone has a breaking point. bucky’s is your gunshot wound.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 91





	bullets and apples

**Author's Note:**

> posted this to tumblr a bit ago and just uploading it all here. it was the first fanfic i had written in a while, so... read at your own risk, please. you can follow me there at subtlebucky if you'd like to check out the other stuff i've posted that isn't also here.

Steve is to your right as you walk down the corridor, Wanda and Bucky following closely.

“Alright, where to next?” Steve keeps his eyes ahead as he speaks.

“Follow the path until you reach an opening.” You hear Sam’s voice come over the earpiece, leading the four of you through the HYDRA base. 

Natasha focuses closely on the bodies. This is the third base you’ve taken down since getting information from her data mission four months ago. Since there was really no more sense of an upper hand, the team had wanted to be cautious.

Nat speaks up right after Sam. “You guys will have to split up once you reach that opening, and then you’ll meet again. Only about ten guys in each path.”

Wanda is directly behind you, so you two go left when you reach the opening. You see Bucky looking at you before you separate completely, and you pause. You know that look. He hates being separated from you on a mission, even when he knows you can take more of a fight than he can, most of the time. You ignore the feeling that rests low in your belly when you make eye contact.

You send him a wink to settle both of your nerves. He rolls his eyes, but smiles gently, one that only you and Steve ever really get to see. The feeling in your stomach gets harder to ignore, but damn if you’ve ever been known to give in easily.

When you get to your side, the quiet is potentially unsettling. You try not to laugh. Bad guys do this _every time_. Do they think making you wait to fight them will instill anything other than _impatience_?

In the hall, you count three side hallways before you can meet with Steve and Bucky again. You turn to Wanda, holding out your 9 mm, not caring if the people you are about to fight hear you. “Are you positive you don’t want a gun?”

She rolls her eyes, picking up on your tone. “My mind is a gun, [Y/N].”

You see movement, and there are three men who are coming towards you. You twist the gun back into position in your hand. Wanda looks at you, brow raised in question, and you nod. She uses her energy to hold the men in place, and you shoot each of them in the head before they have a chance to get close.

You grin at her. “That’s how it’s done.”

She grins with you this time, laughs a bit as she shakes her head. “You are the only person that talks this much and doesn’t die when they fight people.”

Wanda is walking down the hall looking at you, but she is using her mind to hold the guy closest to you both as you shoot the other three coming toward you. “Well,” you shoot the guy she holds, “it’s easy when they’re all idiots!”

You yell it out to the last group, rile them up a little. Wanda holds two that you get, but another two break free before you can shoot them. You tilt your head back as they run toward you, yelling into the air. “Thank you!” Wanda tilts her head, and you shrug. “What? I love when I get to punch the bad guy in the face. Hand-to-hand combat is so much more fun.”

You hear Bucky’s voice through your earpiece as you land your first punch, “I bet we’re still gonna beat you to the next opening.”

You feel hot suddenly, hearing his voice in your ear, and you forget that he can hear _everything_ you guys have been saying. It isn’t bad, necessarily, but… You embarrass easily with him.

“Oh, really?” Your third punch gives the guy a (possibly) broken nose and you take your gun to shoot Wanda’s guy in the back of the head. His hands fall from Wanda’s throat as he drops.

Wanda tries to take a deep breath, but she’s wheezing a bit. You forget Bucky and the earpiece for a moment while you focus on your teammate. “Hey,” you put a hand on her shoulder, “you okay?”

She makes a few more attempts until she eventually gets one good breath in. She clears her throat and nods, and you two are off to the next opening.

“Eleven guys, Natasha.” You look at Wanda and can’t help but laugh. A small smirk rests at the corner of her mouth.

Nat’s voice comes on. “Yeah, yeah. Blame the heat sensors, not me.”

You two are approaching the next opening now, and you realize the lack of Steve or Bucky’s dramatic-fight-groans in your ear. You hold your arm in front of Wanda, and she pauses with you. “Bucky? Steve?”

“Uh, [Y/N], I didn’t wanna say anything ‘cuz Wanda was looking a little messed up there for a minute but— we lost eyes and ears on them.”

“Sam, what?” You are immediately marching to the opening. You cross in the middle, and you hear super soldier grunts coming from the other hallway the closer you get.

There’s a sudden struggling behind you, and you turn. _Shit, shit, shit_ , you think. _Always make sure your team partner is following you **before** you’re about to kick the shit out of someone._

Wanda has a device attached to her that HYDRA used to keep her from using her powers at will when they were training her. You thought you had destroyed them all at the last base, but— _of course not._

Bad Guy #12 is holding an automatic rifle to Wanda’s head. “Give us what you took last time, or she dies.”

You pause, take thirty seconds to formulate some semblance of a plan. “Oh, that’s how you wanna play this?” You turn your head to the side. “You’re requesting things you _know_ we don’t have right now, and if we don’t give you those things, you’ll shoot her with that big ass gun?” You start to move, slow, and make eye contact with Wanda as you tap your lips twice with your pointer finger. _Follow my lead._ She nods.

You shrug. “Then do it.”

You use the surprise in Bad Guy to your advantage. “Go, Wanda,” you shout, and she knees him in the crotch and slides out of his grip. You close in on him, kicking your leg into his face hard once, twice, and he goes down.

After you kick the gun out of the way, you give Wanda your attention. You follow the steps you did last time HYDRA pulled something like this, making sure your touch is gentle as you disarm the device from her neck. When you finish and stand, your reflexes are not as quick as Bad Guy #12.

He fires a shot at Wanda, but you move quick to take it. Wanda’s own reflexes are fast when you do. She uses her powers to give you the gun and you shoot the guy three times in the chest.

He falls over, and your adrenaline goes with him. “ _Fuck_ , wow, I hate getting shot.” You feel your body starting to break and heal around the wound. 

“You were fucking shot?” And you try to pretend your eyes are squeezed shut at the pain, not Bucky’s voice behind you, but, well. Maybe it’s an even tie.

You make it out of the rest of the mission relatively unscathed, with only a few added cuts and bruises that have already healed. Whether that’s to do with your personal skills or the fact that Bucky’s rage seems to make the serum running through his veins work tenfold, no one says.

“Just because you have the ability to heal quickly does not mean you become self-sacrificing!” Bucky is _still yelling_ as Wanda temporarily patches up your wound. The jet was about twenty minutes out from the compound, and it would be easier to get a clean cut into the wound without your almost-dried blood blocking where the bullet protruded from.

The wound had only taken a handful of minutes to heal, so it’s gonna be a nasty one.

You stare at the wall behind him, and you repeat what you have been saying since the minute you heard his stupid voice and his stupid concern. “Wanda would have been shot. I have double the healing power that you and Steve have, and you weren’t even there. If anyone should take one for the team here, it’s me, and everyone knows this.”

Bucky wants to punch the wall you are staring at, if only so you would just look at him. “Wanda had it, [Y/N], Jesus, you-” He pinches fingers between his brows, scrunches his eyes closed. He’s trying hard to remember the exercises he has been through with his therapist, something about breathing deep and counting, but all he can breathe in is the smell of peroxide, and all he can count to is one, one _fucking_ bullet.

“‘I’ what, Bucky? ‘I knew she had it’? ‘Wanda was fine’? Or did you wanna say something else about ‘self-sacrificing’?” You bite out. You still don’t look at him.

“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Didn’t you, though?” You yell that one. “You weren’t even fucking there!” You finally turn to him, and he can see the tears blurring your eyes and running down your cheeks. “Why don’t you ask her, Buck? Ask her if she knew that bullet was coming.”

He turns to Wanda, but she immediately shakes her head. “Whatever you two are doing right now, I am not getting pulled into it.” She finishes cleaning your wound and mouths a thank you to you. She squeezes your hand, then, and crosses to the front of the quinjet, leaving you two alone. 

You turn back to staring straight ahead, jaw tight as you angrily wipe away your tears. Bucky breathes deep, tries the counting. Sits down next to you, arms resting on his knees as he does.

A pause. Tension dances between you two. You’re drained, and Bucky hears it in the way that you sigh before you speak again.

“She didn’t see it, Buck.” You sniffle around his name, so it barely comes out, but he notices. He notices how you sound so small, so quiet that it makes his whole body tense up at something foreign. “Shit, I didn’t see it.” His hand wants to reach out and grab your thigh, rub his thumb back and forth for reassurance. He wants to grab your face and kiss the hell out of you, because, _Jesus_ , he almost lost you. And really, he didn’t, but the feeling lingers all the same.

Instead, he reaches for your hand. When you twine your fingers with his, he kisses a scar that spans over your knuckles. From before you volunteered for your own serum, the mark is the one thing that just never healed. Bucky is in close contact with it as much as he can be without seeming too weird- oddly enough, it reminded him of the ‘40s. 

You sit in silence, then, until the quinjet lands. Bucky helps you stand, shifting so that your arm is around his shoulder. You make it inside, to the end of the hallway where the doors to the infirmary are. You can see the on-site doctor gathering supplies through the glass.

“Bucky,” you say, stopping him from going further. You move your arm from him, lean against the wall.

He doesn’t wanna look at you. He knows if he does, you’re telling him to go. But he wants to stay, God, he wants to _stay_ , wants to make sure you’re alright, safe.

“Look at me.” And you say it with so much resolve in your voice, how can he not? You reach your hand up and hold his face, running fingers across a small cut that was still healing. The way you look at him makes his heartbeat loud in his ears, and he has to focus on your lips to understand what you say next. “She didn’t see it.” Your tone is gentle, like you know why he acted the way he did, like you are forgiving him before he has even apologized, and he’s unaware of his crying until he feels your thumb wipe away tears.

You move your hand to the side, his shoulder, and push down, as if to say, ‘ _lean down to me_ ,’ and your lips meet his cheek when he does. His hair falls into your face, and he is too aware of you in his space before you pull away.

Bucky blinks, turns, and he sees you walking through the doors without him. “[Y/N]?”

You turn around, and it’s tired, filled with exhaustion, but you smile at him. “Stop acting like I’m dying. I just don’t want you down here for when I scream my head off. You,” you point your finger at him, “don’t need anymore blackmail against me.”

He tries to give you a smile brighter than your own, one that is content, supportive, one that says, ‘ _I’ll be fine, and so will you_ ,’ but he knows a crack is showing, one that says, ‘ _I’m in love with you and every time you get hurt, a piece of me dies before I know you’re okay again_.’

He doesn’t look back at the doors as he walks down the hallway, only because he knows you’re standing there, staring at his back, ready to tell him off if he turns to you.

You yell out to him right before he turns the corner, and he thanks you in his head for the permission to look back one more time. “If I’m not upstairs in four hours, have someone call Thor to come shock me awake! I wanna get my post-mission paperwork done with everyone else.”

He laughs, can’t help it, and your smile is not as tired anymore, he notices as he goes.

*******

You said four hours, so Bucky goes to visit you after it’s been four hours and fifteen minutes (if FRIDAY ever said he had her set an alarm, he would deny it). He decides to stop in the kitchen before to grab you a glass of water, just in case.

Instead, he stops, because you’re leaning on the fridge in one of his white tank tops (when, who, how?), biting into an apple. He can’t see it, but he knows you’re grinning, sees it in your eyes.

“What’s up, dude?”

He stands there, dumbfounded, until he sees you cross to the other side of the island. He rushes to meet you there, and you let out an _mph_ as he lifts you. “Alright, alright! Outside, the wound is healed, but my insides are still trying to catch up. I’m all achy- put me down, Barnes.” He rolls his eyes, but places you back on your feet.

Bucky stares at you for a while. You break the silence with an eye roll, but he sees a hint of your smile, now. “So, still trying to prove you’re stronger than me, huh?”

“I wanna kiss you.” He says it. Simple, but out there. Not completely thought through, but can’t take it back.

You don’t freak out, or shove him away, or tell him he sucks. Your smile comes through, then a grin, then a laugh.

You laugh _hard_ , and Bucky frowns. “Jesus.” You place your hands on his chest. “It took you long enough. That’s, like, what, the third time I’ve been shot on a mission?” Bucky’s smiling again, chewing on the inside of his lip in playful agitation, but you continue. “I know the other two went straight through and there was no recovery, but, damn, I would’ve taken a bullet a long time ago if I knew-”

Bucky grabs your face in his hands. “I am begging you to shut up so I can kiss you.”

To your credit, you do stop. Just as he starts to lean in, though, you mimic zipping your mouth shut and tossing the key. Bucky laughs before he gets to you, resting his forehead on yours. “It’s like you insist on making this hard for me.”

You smile at him. “You make it too easy.” You go for it, then, a quick peck, and he deepens it. It’s not perfect. As far as kisses go, it’s not nearly either of your best. The two of you are laughing like crazy, and Bucky thinks it’s a little ridiculous, but it feels so _stupidly right_ to him.


End file.
